A Muskegon man now charged with brutally beating his puppy and slashing its throat for chewing a comforter allegedly murdered his father when he was 19 years old in 1983 but was found “not guilty by reason of insanity.”

Timothy Allen Cregg, now 48, of 865 W. Laketon is lodged in the Muskegon County Jail, facing a charge of animal killing or torture, a four-year felony. The approximately five-month-old pit bull puppy had to be euthanized because of the severity of its injuries.

When Cregg was a teen, he was arrested and charged in the March 18, 1983, shotgun slaying of his 42-year-old, Emanuel Cregg Sr. of Dalton Township.

The father's body was found lying face down in a Cedar Creek Township drainage ditch. The murder was believed to have happened at his home. He bled to death after being wounded by two gunshot wounds to the right and left chest, according to Muskegon Chronicle accounts at the time.

On Dec. 6, 1983, then-Muskegon County Circuit Judge R. Max Daniels found Timothy Cregg not guilty by reason of insanity and ordered him to spend an indefinite period of time in “an appropriate (state) psychiatric institution.”

Daniels said he arrived at his decision after hearing testimony from a forensic psychiatrist from the Center for Forensic Psychiatry in Ypsilanti, who told the judge Cregg suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

Muskegon County Prosecutor Tony Tague said Cregg was released in 2003. Tague said Cregg does not appear to have a record of prior convictions.